Zebra dropping in: A Sentient Excerpt

An excerpt from the currently in-process novella, Sentient. 

Which, by the way, is an awesome story.

A/N: This story started a long time ago in PK with a short story sketch titled The Question/Inner Peace. Since then it has inspired few other short stories and skits. I finally decided I needed to get to the bottom of this story that kept coming up in my writing and for the past year and a half, I have been attempting to write it out. My writing process for it is very different from my usual process. This one is written out in scenes, in snippets of dialogues and paragraphs. In my head the overall feel of the story is crystal clear, but bit by bit the details are coming out. They are not in chronological order, so my randomly ordered excerpts will not be able to illuminate the story properly but I still think you'll enjoy them. Also they'll jump from first person to second person narrative because I'm exploring both right now. Sorry if it's confusing, but it's all part of the process and you get to see it in its raw, unpolished form. And yes, hopefully I'll be showing more excerpts as time goes on. Story is mostly in note-form and random scenes right now.  

Excerpt # 1

I want more of the world. Even when I am on top of the mountain there is not enough of it. In fact, on the mountain, my hunger grows. What's beyond the horizon? I feel drawn to the elusive, hazy horizon, especially the western side, where the sun rises. Perhaps if I get up high enough there will be no horizon to obscure my view. Perhaps if I can lay my eyes on everything spread out below me, I will be satisfied. It is definitely a hunger that I feel. A strong desire. To consume it? To take it all in a wholesome and satisfying way, and keep it in. The spring of sharp wet grass, the spongy cool earth, the elegant, sensual curves of a tree, the delectable cotton clouds, the colours of the sky, the drowsy roll of this flat green prairie spreading out from the foot of the mountains. The mountains. Solid and ancient and steady. The silence, the wisdom of these mountains. It's all so much and I want to take it all in and much more. I am greedy fro the curves of this world. I want to sink my toes in its dirt, stretch my arms up to the sky on its highest peak and drink in the air. I want to feel more than I already can.
 Its as if there's another experience there but I don't have the bodily sense to sense it. But I have a feeling, a void that tells me it exists. It isn't all that confusing, this wild desire. But the fact is I can't explain it and I think it's unique to me. I'm not too sure about that, but lately I've been observing people acutely to see if anyone else feels it. I was with Bryon the goat herder the other day and when we made it to the top of the hill I was hit by that feeling again and I couldn't sense it in him. The day was bright and cool, the grass a cheerful perky green, the prairie overwhelmingly vast and green, the sky glowing blue with fluffy delectable clouds. My hands were clutched tight to my side trying to contain the desire for it all. My heart was leaping and aching and I at once utterly peaceful and filled with longing. I looked toward Byron. He was drowsily looking at the white dots of bleating sheep ambling away while he chewed on a single blade of grass. I envied his job and pitied him. He was not overtaken the scene around him and did not display the same wild desire--in fact very little interest at all.
Liss, the butcher's daughter however displayed a different attitude. She was far more interested. We were walking down Fyll's farm which is at the farthest one.
"Beautiful day, eh?" Liss said. I'd heard such exclamations followed by sighs before, and I always got excited. But I realized soon enough they lacked a wild ache and longing, a strong desire that I always had.
"Yes! Yes, it's gorgeous." It was a gorgeous day in deed. The sky was heavily clouded except fro a few patched  where the sun poured through, a glorious golden. The clouds too glowed golden because of the sunlight behind them. It had just finished raining and a slender rainbow to the east was still visible. Everything around us was clean and fresh looking, and now bathed in honey coloured sunlight. I was overtaken again by the way the sun poured through small patches in the sky. I want to be a part of it. I was not satisfied with just marveling at it. There was something else I had to do it. Fly to it? Touch it? Open my mouth and let it pour into me and then swallow it? But you can't touch light. I clutched my hands tight, trying to keep that urge in control. I glanced towards Liss's hands. One was calmly holding on to a pail, the other was loose by her side.
"Makes you want to drop everything and just stare all day," she said.
"Or much more," I said. She looked at me curiously.
"Like paint it?" She asked.
"Sort of. More like become it. It makes you want to become it." She looked confused.
"Oh," she said. There was a brief silence. "What do you mean?"
At that moment I felt I shouldn't go deeper into it. That what I would describe would was something very freakish, not natural at all, that it would set me even further apart. I felt it was a personal feeling, no supposed to be shared by anyone because no one would understand it. But I longed so much to be understood, to know that I wasn't the only one with such passionate longings for unachievable things. What if she could understand? I wouldn't be alone. I looked at her hopefully. She was my age but a head taller. She had pale hay colour hair and a splash of freckles on her nose and cheeks and wide honest brown eyes. There was a clean and simple quality to her that drew me to often seek her company.
"It's like there's something more you're supposed to do with this kind of beauty. I want to touch it but I can't. There's something that tells me what I'm not supposed to just stand around and stare at it. I need more of it, and I need it very close to me. I can't stand that it's not tangent."
"Oh. Yes, you need to paint it. I think you're a painter," she said in her simple matter-of-fact way. I shrugged. I did not say this to her but I knew she was wrong. Painting would not have been satisfying. I couldn't fully capture what I was seeing before me. It would only be a small piece of it. A painting could never capture the wonder, the splendour, the rush of all my senses, the chills of my spine, the goosebumps and the ache within that was part of the beauty. A painting in its one dimension-ess just could never do it justice. Nothing could. It was in the moment sort of thing and you could attempt to make it tangible with colours or with music and only succeed in revealing just a small part of it. A painting of a sunset can never do justice to the sunset itself and that's what it was like for me. I needed do something with it that would do complete justice to it and satisfy my longing for it by making it achievable. I had to make the sunlight stay in my hands.

...excerpt end....

Excerpt # 2

We could hear the distant sound of the waves. Every time I heard that sound I would realize with a sudden jolt how long I had come. I would look to the sky and still feel amazed that around me were the shapes of buildings, not an open landscape of softly swaying grass. I looked towards the old man. I still didn't know his name. He took another sip of the tea and set it right.
"It is curious indeed," He said.
"But it's driving me crazy. And I well--sometimes I do feel I am crazy. I mean other people don't feel it and it kills me to badly desire something I can never attain." He didn't say anything. I was getting used to his lapses of silence.
"It is because you are mistaken about what you desire," he finally said. I waited for him to continue. His papery wrinkles were dark and mysterious in the night, but his eyes were youthful and bright as the moon. If I looked at them too long I felt shivers, so I looked down at his hands. There was nothing young or odd about those hands. "I think you are pinning an inner sense of beauty and grace, a feeling your soul to this outer beauty, " he continued. "Nature is indeed very beautiful, but what you want deeply, what you are desiring most is that inner beauty. You want to understand that sense more. You're grappling passionately with it. And you've pinned it to nature because that's when that sense is most alive--when you're around beauty and splendour like nature--and that's why you want more of nature. It is actually more of this feeling, and understanding of this feeling that you want more of, not nature. So, you're searching in the wrong place. It's not the mountain peek that will satisfy you, but something within you. The answer is inside you and that requires you to go inside yourself to find it. If it helps to be around beauty to come to terms with it, so be it. But now you know where to look--inside. I can't help you more than that. Only you can find the way to satisfy that void."

....excerpt end....